I was back out at Rutland
Water today to help with the monthly wildfowl count. I was assigned the task of counting south arm
two and Manton Bay and walked from the Lyndon Centre down to low water hide. There was very little around the centre or on
route to deep water hide, except for a few winter thrushes around the hide. From
deep water hide there was a mass of Coot that was tightly packed and constantly
on the move making them very difficult to count. There were also quite a few Wigeon and Tufted
Duck and a few Goldeneye and Great Crested Grebes. Tufted Duck hide produced more Wigeon but
there were also a good number of Gadwall and Mallard and smaller numbers of
Teal, Tufted Duck and Goldeneye and there were three drake and two brown-headed
Goosanders. There was also c.800 Lapwing
and fourteen Dunlin on the bund between Heron Bay and south arm two. Two Lesser Redpoll were observed as I walked
to shallow water hide.
There were good numbers of
Wigeon, Gadwall and Teal from shallow water hide with smaller numbers of
Mallard and there were a couple of Egyptian Goose, four Shelduck; two Shoveler,
two Pochard and three more male Goosander.
There was also more Lapwing, eighteen Golden Plover and seven Dunlin.
I went to the centre to submit
my count figures and spent a short while overlooking lagoon one, where I
counted sixty-four Pintail and found four male and a brown-headed Goosander,
two Dunlin and two Curlew. I went to
grebe hide on lagoon two following reports of the male and female
Stonechat. It didn’t take too long to
locate the male that was observed perched on one of the highest points. The female was far more elusive but I did see
it briefly on one occasion. There were
also another five male Pintail and a single Little Egret.
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